GRASS FAMILY. 355 



P. elatior, TALLER MEADOW FESCUE, A rather rigid grass of meadows 

 and pastures, uat. from Europe: l-4 high, with green flat leaves, a narrow 

 panicle with short branches appressed before and after flowering, 5 -10-flowered 

 green spikelets, the lower palet blunt, or acute, or rarely with a short awn. JJ. 



Br6m.US, BROME GRASS. Spikelets large, at length drooping in an open 

 panicle, containing 5-10 or more flowers, the lower palet with a short bristle 

 point or an awn from the blunt rounded tip or notch, the upper palet soon adher- 

 ing to the grain. Coarse grasses : two or three wild species are common, and the 

 following are weeds of cultivation, from Europe, or the last cultivated for fodder. 



B. secalinus, COMMON CHKSS or CHEAT. Too well known in wheat- 

 fields ; nearly smooth ; panicle open and spreading, even in fruit ; spikelets 

 turgid ; flowers laid broadly over each other in the two ranks ; lower palet 

 convex on the back, concave within, awnless or short-awned. 



B. racem63US. UPRIGHT CHESS : like the other, but with narrower 

 erect panicle contracted in fruit, lower palet slender-awned, and sheaths some- 

 times hairy. 



B. m611is, SOFT CHESS : like the preceding, but soft-downy, with denser 

 conical-ovate spikelets, and the long-awned lower palet acute. 



B. unioloides, or B. SCHRADERI (CERATOCHLOA UNIOLOIDES) : lately 

 much prized for fodder, may be valuable S., is rather stout and broad-leaved, 

 with drooping large spikelets much flattened laterally, so that the lower palets 

 are almost conduplicatc and keeled on the back. ^ 



Briza maxima, LARGE QUAKING GRASS or RATTLESNAKE-GRASS, is 

 sometimes cult, in gardens for ornament, from Eu. : a low grass, with the 

 hanging many-flowered ovate-heart-shaped spikelets somewhat like those of 

 Bromus, but pointless, very tumid, purplish, becoming dry and papery, rattling 

 in the wind, whence the common name. 



*-*--(- Grain and Meadow- Grasses, ivith a mostly t/risted or bent awn on the. 

 back of the lower palet : flowers '2 or 3, or few in the spikeiet, and mostly 

 shorter than the (/lames. 



w- Flowers perfect or the uppermost rudimentary. 



Av6na sativa, CULTIVATED OAT, from Old World: soft and smooth, 

 with a loose panicle of large drooping spikelets, the palets investing the grain, 

 one flower with a long twisted awn on the back, the other awnless. 



A. ntlda, SKINLESS OAT, rarely cult, from Old World : has narrower 

 roughish leaves, 3 or 4 (lowers in the spikeiet, and grain loose in the palets. 



+* *-* One flower perfect and one staminate only. 



Arr9nath6rum avenaceum, \T-GR ASS, or GRASS-OF-THE- ANDES. 



Rath ,T coarse but soft grass, introduced from Europe into meadows and fields, 

 and rather valuable : 2 -4 high, with flat linear leaves, long and loose panicle, 

 thin and very unequal glumes, including a starninate flower, the lower palet, of 

 which bears a long bent awn below its middle, above this a perfect flower with 

 its lower palet bristle-pointed from near the tip, and above that a rudiment of a 

 third flower. % 



Holcus lanatus, VELVET-GRASS, or MEADOW-SOFT-GRASS. Introduced 

 from Eu. into meadows, not very common, l-2 high, well distinguished by 

 its paleness and velvety softness, being soft downy all over ; panicle crowded ; 

 the flowers only 2 in the spikeiet, small, rather distant, the lower one perfect 

 and awnless, the upper staminate and with a curved or hooked awn below the 

 tip of its lower palet. 2/ 



2. Spikelets either strictly spikxl or in a panic'? so contracted and dense as to 

 imitate a spike. (Here, would be swujht one species of C&&m&gro$t\s and 

 one of Phalaris,^or which see above, p. 354, 355. J 



* Awn borne loiv down on the back of one or two palets. 



Anthoxanthum Odoratum, SWEET-SCENTED VERNAL-GRASS, nat. 

 from Eu. : the plant which gives delicious fragrance to drying hay (the other, 



